Hoosier hospitality: How Patchwork Indy is creating a more welcoming state

A Q&A with Patchwork Indy

During the season of giving, there are few gifts as meaningful as what Patchwork Indy aims to provide its growing, culturally diverse community. The not-for-profit organization—and a Welcome Corps private sponsor organization—is “weaving a new social fabric” by developing innovative ways for every individual in Indiana to feel welcome and to flourish in a healthy and diverse community together. Claire Holba, co-founder and director of policy and advocacy, and Najia Sherzod Hoshmand, director of refugee resettlement, spoke with Welcome.US to share more about the organization’s mission and their plans for the new year.

Patchwork Indy shares on its website that Indiana is the top state in submitting matching applications for the Welcome Corps, and as an organization you strive to weave a patchwork of diversity and inclusion in your communities. Can you describe that Hoosier hospitality, and how it helps you with your mission?

Claire: Growing up in Indiana, we pride ourselves on looking after our neighbors and welcoming and living in community—so we call it Hoosier hospitality. It really embodies that welcoming, neighborly, humble spirit.

I think we have in our specific line of work seen this as action. Across diverse actors, sponsors, and partners, people are open to having a conversation on a one-on-one local communal level and listening. It is that neighborly connection, that politeness. It's giving us an opportunity to talk to such a diverse range and spectrum of people, which has allowed us to share more about the Welcome Corps to all of these diverse groups and really have meaningful conversations that ultimately have brought [together] a lot of partners and sponsors.

Najia: I would like to add a little bit, from my personal experience being a refugee myself, coming here three years ago. It was so inspiring to see people—from day one—there are people at your doorstep, they come and they welcome you in different forms. I've seen, irrespective of your background, your faith, your race, whatever nationality, they are always ready to come and help, and that support level has always existed here.

Before joining Patchwork, I was working for the city of Indianapolis. I could see—connected with so many people, so many leaders, and communities in general—I could see that the support level exists, and the communities have that welcoming appetite of trying to help you in any form, in any way they can. That has been a great experience.

Also working on Welcome Corps, where we had to go to the communities for a particular purpose, it was so inspiring to see that it was a kind of investment for their communities in general. They would see it as a positive perspective rather than having to do some extra efforts. They have been so supportive and say, if we bring refugees, they will make our communities better. That has been quite energetic, dynamic, and inspiring.

Najia, as a recent refugee, how has some of that support impacted you and your family?

Najia: Where I am today would not be possible without community support.

To me, I think it was something that I was not expecting. I can just say in very simple words that I started feeling whole being in Indiana and in America, in general.

We were at Camp Atterbury, and there were 6,000 Afghan refugees in that camp. I got connected with somebody who connected us with our “adopted” [American] parents. They came to the first Thanksgiving that we celebrated, the first Christmas we celebrated, the first Christmas tree we had in our home. We had so many new things that we were navigating, and they were along with us as a support system. That was amazing.

To me, it was in those days, you are really waiting for someone to come and help you. We had the resettlement agency, but the resettlement agency is not with you all the time or most of the time. You will have appointments with them. They will try to provide you with those services during the three months time, 90 days or 60 days, from financial to housing to education—but not everything [like] the cultural bonding, the culture orientation, connecting with your neighbors, and so on. There's so much to learn, so much to adapt, and that is not possible without the community support.

Patchwork Indy became one of the first organizations to work with the Welcome Corps as a private sponsor organization. How does the organization help to mobilize and support private sponsors for the Welcome Corps?

Claire: We have an incredible team with different life experiences, with incredible networks and relationships, with such diverse groups of people and organizations. We really lean into that relationship aspect when we are doing our mobilization efforts, relying on warm connections… and leaning into some of the diverse diaspora communities that we have.

We have incredible trusted messengers within communities. I really like identifying and working with those partners in various areas to go out and be the messengers about the Welcome program and bring in new people. We lean into that relational aspect. We think everything depends on that and these relationships that we're cultivating. That's allowed us to reach a lot of different and diverse players in our mobilization efforts.

We do not believe in reinventing the wheel or needing to keep everything in house. That doesn't work. That's not how you grow and work in a movement and bring more people into the mix.

We're a private sponsorship organization for Welcome Corps, [but] there are so many others who are doing incredible work and are trusted in their communities—and they're the better messengers. We need to expand who has knowledge and awareness of the program.

Najia: It's also about the organization's credibility and the value. Patchwork is a name that everybody trusts… We have had the info sessions in different communities, in different organizations, groups, churches, mosques, and people have learned about this program and stepped up to support and to respond to comments on their pledge under this program.

Through advocacy, you work to improve the lives of refugees and immigrants who now call Indiana home. What is the focus of your advocacy work right now?

Claire: Right now, we are looking at a precursor to advocacy in the sense of bringing groups together. If anything, we're a connector and a convener. Bringing new players into the conversation, we're looking at coalition building, but very much in the early stages of having those dialogues.

Welcome for private sponsorship has really allowed us to look at other parts of the state, largely because we're now working with communities outside of the traditional refugee resettlement city of Indianapolis. It's very much evolving. This past October, we had Indiana's Changing Landscape Summit, where we brought together over 40 partners from different sectors, from the business sector to nonprofits to advocacy groups to political leaders to faith groups, and had a discussion about what are things looking like in Indiana? What are we seeing in our different corners? What does it look like to start building coalitions with more multisector cohesion around some of these things we're seeing to make Indiana a better place for everyone—from newcomers to natives alike.

A new year presents new opportunities and challenges. What does the organization hope to accomplish in 2025?

Claire: We want to keep doing what we've been doing, which is bringing people together around this shared commitment to welcome and serve for a purpose beyond themselves. Those are universal desires and longings that we all have. People need to be given a direct vision and opportunity to do that, and so we want to continue to do that.

We want to continue to deepen our relationships and the community of welcome that we've already started to build. In just the last couple of weeks, we have 53 sponsor groups that we mobilized to sign up to welcome a family that they don't know. We want to continue to build this collective sense of community around that because people are hungering for that, and I think they're hungering for wanting to welcome and coming together.

I know the national narrative doesn't often reflect that, but we see it on the ground. We see people coming together that you wouldn't always necessarily think that they are stepping forward to be sponsors from small towns to the big cities, from different sectors and professional backgrounds and even religions and political viewpoints. There's something uniting here. We want to continue to walk forward on that welcoming together.

How can Welcomers support your work?

Claire: Within Indiana, we’re looking to connect and have gatherings—what does it look like in smaller communities and other geographic areas, why become a sponsor, why step into this, and join us in building this fun, meaningful community.

Najia: We are looking to collaborate beyond Indiana.

Claire: It's very important, and we are open to connect and to collaborate with different stakeholders, with different partners. It's not only Indiana, we are looking beyond that.